Preparation for Testing

Get trained by your application trainers on the specific profiles when it comes to using your software, e.g.

Be prepared to contour image data

Perform treatment planning

Show plan details for judging

Testing

For actor specific instructions, see respective profile page, and information in the profile.

In general it's best if you can only test against a vendor who has previously passed, but that may not be possible at all Connectathons

In order to pass a specific profile, test instructions will be provided in order to prepare data for the judging. The general rule is that an application implementing a consumer actor has to consume data from at least three different vendors. An application implementing a producer actor has to provide data that will be tested on at least three other systems. Only then, not only interconnectivity, but interoperability can be testified.

A Test tool installers can be downloaded from the Test Tools page. (Only available to Connectathon participants)

Attendance and Cooperation

Plan to be in attendance for the entire week, Monday through Friday. Judges cannot predict when they will be able to test your adherence, and other vendors may need to run networking tests against your data before judges are available. Judging time depends on many things:

Room setup, network setup

Dependency on test data, often with a requirement to be generated during testing by the judges

Lack of preparedness of you or your testing partners may negatively affect all schedules.

Communicate with your vendor peers. See who is testing what, learn where materials are posted, and what are the next steps.

If you find some information is not easily accessible, volunteer to post it in a visible place or put it on the wiki.

The role of judges is to judge, they will not help with software issues, networking issues or other technical concerns. Everyone else in the room is a vendor attendee, other than ASTRO support personnel.

If you need to leave for an extended time, please inform the judges who can adjust test times if needed.

Carefully read your registration materials and contract from ASTRO. There are further binding agreements detailed there.

Supporting Attendance

Once you have shown adherence to a profile, please plan to attend as a test supporter in following years. Because of the small (and shrinking!) number of vendors in the RO arena, truly testing interoperability is only possible if every implementer of a given profile is in attendance, whether they are actively testing for adherence or not.

Shipping Your Equipment

Please see the following information → TBD

Contact AAPM with any questions.

PACS Usage

The PACS will be used for dataset storage and retrieval.

This is a common place where judges can place test data, and where vendors can store output of their tests for evaluation and use by other vendors

The PACS is supplied and run by a vendor volunteer. Please be respectful of their time and work, since they are likely trying to get through testing, as well as supporting the persistence function of the Connectathon.

If you are a new vendor, please contact the judges for an appropriate vendor code

Informal Testing

Connectathons are opportunities for informal testing of new profiles. It is a good opportunity to stress an implementation and even perform some vendor-specific peer-to-peer tests. This is not only possible, but also encouraged. Participating vendors are advised to prepare their own test schedule and discuss with others how their goals can be met. As judges are available, too, feel free to address them with any questions regarding testing during the official Connectathon.